Somerset LMC Weekly Update 19th July 2019
Date sent: Friday 19 July 2019
All Somerset GPs and Practice Managers This and previous updates can be found here
- "Shocker at the Short 10th" the latest Blog from LMC Chairman Dr Nick Bray
- brief Notes from the Somerset GP Board meeting 17th July 2019
- Written Instruction for the administration of seasonal flu vaccination to staff, or, “Winter is coming”
- CA 125 Testing and 2WW Referrals
- 2018 Suture Tariff
- Severe Mental Illness (SMI) initiative from NHS England
- More Good News:Nine out of 10 patients have ‘confidence and trust’ in their GP
- Embedding Document Workflow Workshops 11th September 2019
Written Instruction for the administration of seasonal flu vaccination to staff, or, “Winter is coming”: During the 2018/19 flu season the NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service (SPS) became aware of problems for healthcare organisations offering employees the seasonal flu vaccine within the Patient Group Direction legislation for occupational health purposes. You’ll be relieved to hear that “SPS has been working with all the relevant stakeholders to identify a way that organisations can offer employee seasonal flu vaccinations within the legislation [and that t]he outcome …has been to produce a written instruction for seasonal influenza vaccination.” This can be adopted by practices following the signed authorisation by the doctor assuming responsibility for staff being vaccinated like the Medical Director or a GP partner. Once adopted and authorised the written instruction allows named GPNs to give flu jabs including as a peer to peer vaccinator. This went out in the LMC update for nurses so if you are asked to sign something just do it!
CA125 Testing and 2WW Referrals A plea from the gynaecology oncologists at T&S – when making urgent referrals for suspected ovarian disease please make sure a CA 125 blood test will be available. These are generally (but not always) ordered by GPs but, owing to delays in getting a nurse or HCA appointment at the practice, patients are often seen at T&S before the result is known (or even before the blood is taken). You don’t have to wait for the result, but not having it available does make a difference to the patient pathway and so can add avoidable delay to management and extra anxiety all round.
2018 SUTURE TARIFF: Last year we publicised changes made to the list of suture materials that will be reimbursed after the Association of Surgeons in Primary Care made us aware of this unilateral, central decision. We have now heard reports of prescriptions being returned, unpaid by the PPA and so at cost to practices. Please be reminded of the up-to-date tariff
Severe Mental Illness (SMI) initiative from NHS England As stated in last weeks update this had not been agreed with the LMC and we are working with the CCG on a solution to extract this data via EMIS analytics so practices may choose to help with this current collection.
Nine out of 10 patients have ‘confidence and trust’ in their GP The results of the annual national NHS GP patient survey were published recently showing that nine out of 10 patients have ‘confidence and trust’ in their family doctor and general practice staff including nurses. Patients rate their overall experience of their family doctor highly, with four out of five saying their GP treats them with ‘care and concern’ and provides them with enough time to listen to their needs. Nine out of 10 patients felt involved in decisions about their care, while four in five rated their overall experience of making a GP appointment as ‘good’. Politicians would give their right arms to have such approval ratings. The GPC’s Richard Vautrey said, “It is gratifying to see that despite the immense pressure we are working under (underlined by the results of the GMC workload survey above), our patients continue to appreciate the amazing job we do.” You can read the full BMA press release here.
Embedding Document Workflow Workshops 11th September This training is aimed at reviewing progress within practices; sharing good ideas and tips between practices and with the help from EPI to advance processes and for each practice to develop a SMART action plan for the coming 6-9 months.
Ideally 3/4 should attend per practice,the GP Champion Practice Manager AND one of the day-to-day document managers,with up to 8 practices represented per event, please book either the AM or PM session here (these sessions are fully funded by GPFV monies)
Kind Regards
Jill
Jill Hellens
Executive Director
Somerset LMC
TEL: 01823 331428
Fax:01823 338561
General Practice in Somerset Great Place Great Potential
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